It's been a very busy couple of weeks but we're now mostly settled and organized. We finally got the keys for the house a week ago on Friday and spent the best part of an hour walking round saying "Wow, it's ours, we're finally in!", and deciding, yet again, where everything was going!!
Despite having no container, and therefore what we thought as not a lot to do, until the Monday we managed to spend most of the weekend doing house related stuff; several car loads of things were moved across, a trip to Home Depot ( think American B & Q) was 'needed', and the new Dyson needed to be tested out on all the new carpets that needed defluffing.
Monday morning finally arrived, with Andy and I up and awake earlier than we had been since arriving in the US. We had to be at the new house before 8 and wanted to take the last few things across with us so we didn't have to worry about coming back for a while. Ugh, early mornings do not suit any of us!
Impressively for us we arrived at the house before 7:45! Typically then the container didn't arrive until gone 9:00! Having been in a state of excited anticipation I was slightly thrown by the container, when it did arrive, as it wasn't the one we waved goodbye to in the UK. Where we had put it in storage everything had been moved into big wooden crates. Initially, I was rather sceptical as to whether we would find our stuff in there or not and then I saw a little green face that reassured me it was all OK. (Steph's turtle sandpit had only been partially wrapped :-). )
It's quite hard to describe the feelings that we went through that Monday. We were excited but at the same time relieved, along with certain feelings of satisfaction and contentment as our home was brought back to us. The 'magic men' were excellent. All boxes came through the garage where they were ticked off a list and either opened or taken straight to where we wanted them. It was quite strange watching our lives unfurling in front of us.
We've always been gatherers and knew we had a lot of stuff and I was kind of expecting the boxes to overwhelm this house, particularly the garage. It was a nice surprise to find that actually we had space to spare and room to move in.
By mid afternoon the men had done their work and we were left with a house full of boxes. A tough week followed as we worked hard to empty boxes and get everything put away or at least in the right room. The kitchen was the hardest job as there must have been at least 20 boxes. Each box took forever to empty as everything was so well wrapped and when we got to the end of each box it was slightly disappointing as the pile of booty was not very large. I remember one particular box had only twelve glasses and a picture in it!
A week later and the house is now mostly sorted, we still have piles and Andy's playroom and garage still need sorting but the house is now completely livable in and I can actually sit down and relax without feeling there is a job that has to be done NOW.
Steph is loving being in the house, she's working on gaining at least one bruise a day as she explores the treehouse, climbs anything that looks climbable and falls down unfamiliar steps. She's really enjoying being reunited with her toys and is playing with them on a whole different level. A definite advantage in taking her toys away for 2 months means we can really see the change in how she uses them. The imaginative play is fascinating to watch, I have no idea where that imagination comes from! Our priority when unpacking was to try and get Steph's room sorted so she felt she had her space. She has her new bedding, which she loves and yesterday she and I spent ages putting transfers on her walls that matched the bedding, so it was Stephie's special room.
The baby's room is now finally ready. It was the one room I was hoping to get sorted fairly quickly and ended up being the last to be done. Unfortunately the set of drawers for that room got damaged in the move and now need a fairly big repair job, rendering them useless for a while. After a few days of pondering various solutions we have moved the drawers from the spare room up. The other factor holding up this room was the cot. When it was packed by the men it was a cot bed and they carefully took it apart and packed all the screws and bits together and labelled them. When we moved it from a cot to a cot bed we also carefully bagged up the screws etc for that bit and put them somewhere safe in the garage, which meant that when we tried to put the cot together they were in a box 'somewhere' and not where we needed them! The other things we needed to put the cot together were some basic tools; also in a box somewhere in the garage!!
Having worked rather manically last week in a bid to get sorted the aim for this week is to bimble away at what is left to do but also have a fairly gentle week and give our bodies a little down time. Steph and I are therefore spending the mornings at parks or with people and then the afternoons alternating between playing, sorting and reading books.
Saturday is 'sort the basement / playroom day'. Hopefully then we shall have some computers up and running and we can locate all the bits not yet found. We're assuming their all in the boxes that we hid down there.......
Then, on Sunday I've told the baby it's allowed to come :-)
( However best laid plans and all that, due date is 29th so we may find that it doesn't follow my plan, we shall keep you posted)
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